Akira Kurosawa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - The Diigo Meta page

• 07 Jul 09
  

  Laurence Baker

  Kurosawa

  • Kagemusha
  • Kagemusha
  • 15 more annotations...
  • • In a career that spanned 50 years, Kurosawa directed 30 films. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. In 1989, he was awarded the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement "for cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world.

    • In 1936, Kurosawa learned of an apprenticeship program for directors through a major film studio, PCL (later Toho).^[6] He was hired and worked as an assistant director to Kajiro Yamamoto. After his directorial debut with Sanshiro Sugata (1943), his next few films were made under the watchful eye of the wartime Japanese government and sometimes contained nationalistic themes. For instance, The Most Beautiful (1944) is a propaganda film about Japanese women working in a military optics factory. Judo Saga 2 (1945) portrays Japanese judo as superior to western (American) boxing.

      
      

      His first post-war film No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), by contrast, is critical of the old Japanese regime and is about the wife of a left-wing dissident who is arrested for his political leanings. Kurosawa made several more films dealing with contemporary Japan, most notably Drunken Angel (1948) and Stray Dog (1949). However, it was the period film Rashomon (1950) which led to him being known internationally and won him the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.^[7]

    • Kurosawa had a distinctive cinematic technique, which he had developed by the 1950s. He liked using telephoto lenses for the way they flattened the frame. He believed that placing cameras farther away from his actors produced better performances as they would not be conscious of the camera. He also liked using multiple cameras, which allowed him to shoot an action scene from different angles. As with the use telephoto lenses, the multiple-camera technique also prevented Kurosawa's actors from "figuring out which one is shooting him" and [invariably turning] one-third to halfway in its direction."^[8] Another Kurosawa trademark was the use of weather elements to heighten mood; for example, the heavy rain in the opening scene of Rashomon and the final battle in Seven Samurai (1954); the intense heat in Stray Dog; the cold wind in Yojimbo (1961); the snow in Ikiru (1952); and the fog in Throne of Blood (1957). Kurosawa also liked using frame wipes, sometimes cleverly hidden by motion within the frame, as a transition device.

    • Cinematic influences include Frank Capra, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, his mentor Kajiro Yamamoto, and his favorite director John Ford,^[13] whose habit of wearing dark glasses Kurosawa emulated. When Kurosawa met Ford, the American simply said, "You really like rain." Kurosawa responded, "You've really been paying attention to my films."^[14] He would later instruct Yoshio Tsuchiya, one of the actors in Seven Samurai, to retrieve the same hat Ford wore during that meeting.^[15]

      
      

      Despite criticism by some Japanese critics that Kurosawa was "too Western,"^[16] he was deeply influenced by Japanese culture as well, such as the Noh theaters and the Jidaigeki (period drama) genre of Japanese cinema.

    • Seven Samurai was remade as The Magnificent Seven (1960)^[17] and Rashomon was remade by Martin Ritt in 1964's The Outrage.

      
      

      Yojimbo was unofficially remade as the Sergio Leone western A Fistful of Dollars (1964) (resulting in a successful lawsuit by Kurosawa)^[18] and was remade as the prohibition-era film Last Man Standing (1996). Sanjuro was also remade in 2007 as Tsubaki Sanjuro, directed by Yoshimitsu Morita.

      
      

      The Hidden Fortress (1957) was remade as The Last Princess (2008) and is an acknowledged influence on George Lucas's Star Wars films, in particular Episodes IV and VI and most notably in the characters of R2-D2 and C-3PO.^[19][20] Lucas also used a modified version of Kurosawa's signature wipe transition throughout the Star Wars saga.

    • Throne of Blood
    • Kagemusha
    • Rashomon
    • Seven Samurai
    • 1957
      Throne of Blood
    • 958
      The Hidden Fortress
    • 1961
      Yojimbo
      
      aka The Bodyguard
      用心棒​
      Yōjinbō
      
      1962
      Sanjuro
    • Red Beard
    • 1980
      Kagemusha
    • 5
      Ran
• 21 Feb 09
  

  Jonathan Senior
  • He was known as "Tenno", literally "Emperor", for his dictatorial directing style. He was a perfectionist who spent enormous amounts of time and effort to achieve the desired visual effects
  • ended up using up the entire local water supply of the location area in creating the rainstorm. In the final scene of Throne of Blood, in which Mifune is shot by arrows, Kurosawa used real arrows shot by expert archers from a short range, landing within centimetres of Mifune's body.
• 15 Jan 09
  

  was a prominent Japanese filmmaker, film producer, and screenwriter.

  Cinema japan demiurges

• 02 Feb 08
  

  anatoly antohin

  analysis cinema class classes course directors film for:film history movie movies reference

• 26 Jul 06
  

  wilde ny

  Movies

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